January 29, 2007

My startup company, Radar Networks, has been busy working in stealth on the next-generation of the Web (sometimes called "Web 3.0"). We've been quietly growing and putting the pieces in place all year. Today we are celebrating the opening of our new, much larger office at 410 Townsend in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. It's a gorgeous (and huge) space with room to grow the company for several years. We're excited to be here. This marks a key milestone in the growth of the venture. 2007 is going to be a big year for us.

January 26, 2007

One of the most fundamental patterns of scientific
discovery is the revolution in thought that accompanies a new body of
data. Satellite-based astronomy has, during the past decade, overthrown
our most cherished ideas of cosmology, especially those relating to the
size, dynamics and composition of the Universe.

Similarly,
the convergence of fresh theoretical ideas in evolution and the coming
avalanche of genomic data will profoundly alter our understanding of
the biosphere — and is likely to lead to revision of concepts such as
species, organism and evolution. Here we explain why we foresee such a
dramatic transformation, and why we believe the molecular reductionism
that dominated twentieth-century biology will be superseded by an
interdisciplinary approach that embraces collective phenomena.

The place to start is horizontal gene transfer (HGT),
the non-genealogical transfer of genetic material from one organism to
another — such as from one bacterium to another or from viruses to
bacteria. Among microbes, HGT is pervasive and powerful — for example,
in accelerating the spread of antibiotic resistance. Owing to HGT, it
is not a good approximation to regard microbes as organisms dominated
by individual characteristics. In fact, their communications by genetic
or quorum-sensing channels indicate that microbial behaviour must be
understood as predominantly cooperative.

In the
wild, microbes form communities, invade biochemical niches and partake
in biogeochemical cycles. The available studies strongly indicate that
microbes absorb and discard genes as needed, in response to their
environment. Rather than discrete genomes, we see a continuum of
genomic possibilities, which casts doubt on the validity of the concept
of a 'species' when extended into the microbial realm. The uselessness
of the species concept is inherent in the recent forays into
metagenomics — the study of genomes recovered from natural samples as
opposed to clonal cultures. For example, studies of the spatial
distribution of rhodopsin genes in marine microbes suggest such genes
are 'cosmopolitan', wandering among bacteria (or archaea) as
environmental pressures dictate.

Equally exciting is
the realization that viruses have a fundamental role in the biosphere,
in both immediate and long-term evolutionary senses. Recent work
suggests that viruses are an important repository and memory of a
community's genetic information, contributing to the system's
evolutionary dynamics and stability. This is hinted at, for example, by
prophage induction, in which viruses latent in cells can become
activated by environmental influences. The ensuing destruction of the
cell and viral replication is a potent mechanism for the dispersal of
host and viral genes.

A documentary film shot by a teenager is shocking audiences. The film replicates a study done in the 1950's on race, showing how black children view themselves and white children. The results are surprising. Watch this link for an excerpt from the film (after the ad clip).

January 25, 2007

This one really takes the cake. Diebold, the makers of the infamously hackable electronic voting machines, has done it again. They posted photos for replacement keys for their voting machines on their Web site. Unfortunately the photos were high enough resolution that anyone who knows how to make keys could easily copy them. And that's exactly what one hacker did and he documented how he did it too -- using just the photo and a file he made a set of universal keys that can unlock any Diebold voting machine. DUH! So now this basically means that the security of every Diebold voting machine is potentially compromised. The only way for Diebold to fix this would be to replace all the locks in all their machines. Will they do this? Highly unlikely. More on this story here.

If you or your children use cell phones frequently, consider getting earphones...

Long-term users of mobile phones are significantly
more likely to develop a certain type of brain tumour on the side of
the head where they hold their handsets, according to new research.

A
large-scale study found that those who had regularly used mobiles for
longer than 10 years were almost 40 per cent more likely to develop
nervous system tumours called gliomas near to where they hold their
phones

Where do I sign up to support this initiative? A group of exasperated US airline passengers who were stuck on the tarmac for 10 hours last month have come up with a proposal for a bill to establish a Passenger's Bill of Rights, which would include the following provisions:

Establishing procedures for airlines to return passengers to a terminal gate after three hours on the tarmac.

Requiring airlines to respond to complaints within 24 hours and resolve them within two weeks.

Compensation for bumped passengers or passengers whose flights are
delayed by more than 12 hours at 150 percent of the ticket price.

Compensation for passengers whose baggage is lost or mishandled.

Creation of a Passenger Review Committee made up of nonairline consumers to review and investigate complaints.

Having been in situations like this myself I can attest to the fact that something has to be done about this. Last summer I was stuck on the tarmac in Texas in 120 degree heat. The plane's air conditioner was turned off because they wanted to conserve fuel, so inside the plane it was probably 130 degrees. To top that off nobody could get up, and the crew had to remain seated as well so they couldn't even bring people water. This lasted for 2 hours. I was almost passing out -- I can only imagine what it must have been like for children, the elderly or people with medical conditions. Airlines treat passengers only a little better than baggage, and that is not saying much! Something needs to be done about this and I'm glad an initiative is forming to take action. Count me in!

Ever wonder how well your jet plane is maintained? Well check out these photos of the engines of a Chinese jet that was recently grounded in Germany due to um....well... you just have to see it and read the description...

January 20, 2007

Some very interesting research out of University of Rochester. Researchers there have found a way to record and later retrieve an image using only a single photon. This is cool enough -- but wait, there's more -- they did this by leveraging the famous "double slit" experiment of quantum mechanics in a really smart way. Why didn't I think of this??? Duh!

To produce the UR image, Howell simply shone a beam
of light through a stencil with the U and R etched out. Anyone who has
made shadow puppets knows how this works, but Howell turned down the
light so much that a single photon was all that passed through the
stencil.
Quantum mechanics dictates some strange things at that scale, so
that bit of light could be thought of as both a particle and a wave. As
a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once, carrying
the "shadow" of the UR with it. The pulse of light then entered a
four-inch cell of cesium gas at a warm 100 degrees Celsius, where it
was slowed and compressed, allowing many pulses to fit inside the small
tube at the same time.

My cousin, Jeremy (the reincarnation of Ernest Hemmingway, I am certain), lives out by Muir Beach, San Francisco. Today he and some manly-man friends are going fishing for "monkey faced eel." YUCK. But ok, anyway, they're the ones who have to eat the stuff. Now I'm not a fan of eel (can you tell?), and I'm also not a fan of fishing -- I think it's cruel (which is an admittedly hypocritical view, since I still eat fish and I suppose they have to come from somewhere. Oh well, too bad we don't have Soylent Green to eat yet.). But in any case, Jeremy, or "JD" as we all like to call him, is a serious flyfisherman and generally a hunter (not a gatherer) type -- so I guess the prospect of being washed out to sea on the rocks is a small price to pay for the chance of snagging a slimy sea snake, bludgeoning it to death or suffocating it, and then boiling it into some kind of savory eel-stew concoction or something. Jeremy has never actually hunted for monkeyfaced eel and all he knows about the subject he learned from the video below. That's gonna be entertaining. But it's probably going to be even more dramatic given that his innocent wife, Natasha -- who doesn't like to eat anything "cute" (fortunately, monkefaced eel are definitely NOT cute)-- will be standing onshore anxiously watching him risk his life to bring a kill back to cave-clan. Anyway the point of this is that he just sent me an instructional video on How to Poke Pole the Monkeyfaced Eel (click the link for the video of that title on the page this goes to) and it is hilarious. The guy in the video is deadpan serious but completely zany. And the editing is great. You've gotta watch this.

January 19, 2007

It ranks among the most enduring mysteries of the cosmos. Physicists
call it the Fermi paradox after the Italian Nobel laureate Enrico
Fermi, who, in 1950, pointed out the glaring conflict between
predictions that life was elsewhere in the universe - and the
conspicuous lack of aliens who have come to visit.

Now a Danish
researcher believes he may have solved the paradox. Extra-terrestrials
have yet to find us because they haven't had enough time to look.

My guess is that the numbers might be different however. An alien civilization that could send out probes at one tenth the speed of light would probably be smart enough to create self-replicating probes, in order to generate thousands or millions of probes over time. This might bring the numbers down significantly -- although perhaps still not enough.

A new "miracle drug" appears to cure many types of cancers in a novel way. But the catch is no pharmaceutical company will fund research in it because it can't be patented! Maybe it's time to start a government agency or a non-profit that funds research and development, and distribution of, wonder drugs that are not patentable, for the public good. They could sell the drugs at cost as a non-profit -- so they would recover their investment, without making a profit. If the Gates Foundation really wanted to help cure the world's diseases this is a model for how they could do it. We can't rely only on for-profit big-pharma ventures to solve all our problems. As this case illustrates, there are potential solutions that are not only effective but also inexpensive, which are falling through the cracks because they are not defensible exclusive commerical product opportunites.

January 14, 2007

Hey everyone, please RSVP if you are planning to come to the first SFWIN event of the year, in San Francisco -- this Thursday, January 18. SFWIN is a gathering of technologists. There are about 200 people in the network and about 50 to 80 usually show up at each event. Please help get the word out by inviting your friends in the industry as well.

Note: After watching a lot more Craig Ferguson, I have one criticism: He recycles his jokes! He often tells the same jokes and repeats the same gags. This is actually annoying. I guess it makes sense economically -- he doesn't have to come up with as much new material, but I find it awkward. His jokes are still very funny and good -- but not as funny or good the second, third and fourth time. Craig, if you are listening, pay your joke-writers to work a full week!!!

January 07, 2007

Go see the film Children of Men -- it's a bleak, brilliant, entirely convincing vision of the near future -- and has great action too. Here's a YouTube video that makes the case for why this film should win an award.

Twine | Nova Spivack - My Public Twine items

Radar Networks

In 1999 I flew to the edge of space with the Russian air force, with Space Adventures. I made it to an altitude of just under 100,000 feet and flew at Mach 3 in a Mig-25 piloted by one of Russia's best test-pilots. These pics were taken by Space Adventures from similar flights to mine. I didn't take digital stills -- I got the whole flight on digital video, which was featured on the Discovery Channel.

In 1999 I was invited to Russia as a guest of the Russian Space Agency to participate in zero-gravity training on an Ilyushin-76 parabolic flight training aircraft. It was really fun!!!! Among other people on that adventure were Peter Diamandis (founder of the X-Prize and Zero-G Corporation), Bijal Trivedi (a good friend of mine, science journalist), and "Lord British" (creator of the Ultima games). Here are some pictures from that trip...

People I Like

Peter F. DruckerPeter F. Drucker was my grandfather. He was one of my principal teachers and inspirations all my life. My many talks with him really got me interested in organizations and society. He had one of the most impressive minds I've ever encountered. He died in 2005 at age 95. Here is what I wrote about his death. His foundation is at http://www.pfdf.org/

Mayer SpivackMayer Spivack is my father; he's a brilliant inventor, cognitive scientist, sculptor, designer and therapist. He also builds carbon fiber trimarans in his spare time, and studies animal intelligence. He is working on several theories related to the origins of violence and ways to prevent it, new treatments for learning disabilities, and new theories of cognition. He doesn't have a Web site yet, but I'm working on him...

Marin SpivackMarin Spivack is my brother. He is the one of the only western 20th generation lineage holders of the original Chen Family Tai Chi tradition in China. He's been practicing Tai Chi for about 6 to 10 hours a day for the last 10 years and is now one of the best and most qualified Tai Chi teachers in America. He just returned from 3 years in China studying privately with a direct descendant of the original Chen family that created Tai Chi. The styles that he teaches are mainly secret and are not known or taught in the USA. One thing is for sure, this is not your grandmother's Tai Chi: This is serious combat Tai Chi -- the original, authentic Tai Chi, not the "new age" form that is taught in the USA -- it's intense, physically-demanding, fast, powerful and extremely deadly. If you are serious about Tai Chi and want to learn the authentic style and applications, the way it was meant to be, you should study with my brother. He's located in Boston these days but also travels when invited to teach master classes.

Louise FreedmanLouise specializes in art-restoration. She does really big projects like The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Gardner Museum and Harvard University. She's also a psychotherapist and she's married to my dad. She likes really smart parrots and she knows how to navigate a large sailboat.

Kris ThorissonKris has been working with me for years on the design of the Radar Networks software, a new platform for the Semantic Web. He has a PhD from the MIT Media Lab. He designs intelligent humanoids and virtual realities. He is from Iceland, which makes him pretty cool.

Kimberly RubinKim is my girlfriend and partner, and also a producer of 11 TV movies, and now an entrepreneur in the pet industry. She is passionate about animals. She has unusual compassion and a great sense of humor.

Kathleen SpivackKathleen Spivack is my mother. She's a poet, novelist and creative writing teacher. She was a personal student of Robert Lowell and was in the same group of poets with Silvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton. She coaches novelists, playwrites and poets in France and the USA. She teaches privately and her students, as well as being published, have won many of the top writing prizes.

Josh KirschenbaumJosh is a visual effects whiz, director and generalist hacker in LA. We have been pals and collaborators since the 1980's. Josh is probably going to be the next Jim Cameron. He's also a really good writer.

Joey TamerJoey is a long-time friend and advisor. She is an expert on high-tech strategic planning.

Jim WissnerJim is among the most talented software developers I've ever worked with. He's a prolific Java coder and an expert on XML. He's the lead engineer for Radar Networks.

Jerry MichalskiI have been friends with Jerry for many years; he's been advising Radar Networks on social software technology.

Chris JonesChris is a long-time friend and now works with me in Radar Networks, as our director of user-experience. He's a genius level product designer, GUI designer, and product manager.

Bram BorosonBram is an astrophysicist and college pal of mine. We spend hours and hours brainstorming about cellular automata simulations of the universe. He's one of the smartest people I ever met.

Bari KoralBari Koral is a really talented singer songwriter. We co-write songs together sometimes. She's getting some buzz these days -- she recently opened for India Arie. She worked at EarthWeb many years ago. Now she tours almost all year long and she just had a hit in Europe. Check out her video, on her site.

Adam CohenAdam Cohen is a long-term friend; we were roommates in college. He is a really talented composer and film-scorer. He doesn't have a Web site but I like him anyway! He's in Hollywood living the dream.